The Middle East

Three years after the uprisings

A gloomy picture

Revolutions take time. Look at France, or America, or Russia. They were all messy and bloody and lasted for years.

We didn’t know the scale or shape of the problem we faced. Now we know.

The barrier of fear is broken. People will never bow or stay silent again.

WITH such words Arabs console themselves. Yet the fact is that three years after a despairing Tunisian barrow boy named Muhammad Bouazizi (pictured in the poster above) set himself on fire, kindling a region-wide sequence of revolts that some dubbed the Arab spring, a sense of deep disappointment has settled on the Middle East. It is not hard to see why.

What those popular uprisings demanded was an end to despotism, an end to humiliation at the hands of the powerful, and a better lot for everyone.

But the turmoil has brought few tangible rewards. Aside from such momentary thrills as watching dictators tumble, and marching shoulder to brotherly shoulder with one’s fellows, bellowing insults in a fleeting chorus of unified purpose, it has mostly brought trouble. "Revolution?" snorts a barber in Cairo. "It was a revolution against the people."

In the countries shaken directly by revolts—Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria—living standards have uniformly fallen. In some cases—particularly for the poorest and most disadvantaged, they have fallen precipitously. Mr Bouazizi’s hometown, Sidi Bouzid, where unemployment pushed 25% before the unrest, suffers an even higher rate now, and joblessness has surged in other countries, too. Nowhere have the stark divides between classes that underpinned political resentment, and which fueled not only revolution but religious extremism and violence, been addressed meaningfully.

The scorecard for democratic transition or even administrative reform is not much better. Egypt’s roller-coaster post-revolutionary politics have come full circle. The country may again get a wobbly veneer of democracy, but the same ruthless, paranoid deep state and the same business interests wield about the same unchecked power they did before. Tunisia is more promising, but even if its more cohesive and liberal-minded political elite stay on course, it will take years before real change comes to places such as Sidi Bouzid. Transitions in Libya and Yemen, meanwhile, remain imperiled by tribal and regional squabbles, as well as a proliferation of guns in the hands of radical Islamist groups. In Bahrain the revolution simply crumpled, crushed under the weight of arms and demonised by a Sunni ruling family that painted demands for democracy by the country’s Shia majority as a lunge for sectarian dominance.

Most other governments that survived the wave of change used softer tactics. Insulated by high oil prices, Gulf monarchies simply handed their people more money. But they have also clamped down on civil liberties; political repression is more severe than it was before 2011. Their rulers are more smug than ever, as is the Arabs' eternal enemy and political counterpoint, Israel, secure and prosperous as never before.

And this is not to mention the cost in blood of the Arab revolts, let alone the utter calamity that has befallen Syria’s 23m people, and increasingly many of their neighbours. Not only have at least 130,000 Syrians perished, and as many as 11m been forced to flee their homes. There is no end in sight to their misery. The concatenation of factors feeding into the Syrian morass, from meddling foreign powers to sectarian and class schisms, have created a perfect storm that may only be tamed by consuming itself.

Which leaves only those small consolations. Yes, it is true that most Western revolutions dragged on, and often devolved into terror. France did not really achieve a stable democracy until nearly a century after the fall of the Bastille. Yes, Arabs wishing for real change do now know much better what they are up against. But they have yet to find peaceful ways of getting there, or even of finding ways to agree on where to go. And although perhaps ordinary Arab citizens feel less fear of their oppressors, they have come to know other kinds of fear: fear of chaos and fear of each other.

The House of Saud has ruled its' current territory for roughly a century, and Chinese Communism (or at least the Communist Party) is still firmly in control of that nation. The death of "Bad Men" can help, but more must be done if change is to happen than for us all to simply wait.

1. The Arab world moved from colonial domination to "strong man" leaders, together with "monarchies" essentially planted and in some cases created as part of the handover from the West. In other words, the Arab world is still dealing with the hangover of colonialism.

2. The Arab world missed its chance to move to democracy because it chose military dictatorships and oligarchies which kept their own people down so, over time, the opposition which arose was heavily influenced and often dominated by Islamists who are, in essence, opposed to modernity itself.

3. The Arab world has never invested in its people. Women lag tremendously in education and earnings. There are, according to the UN, fewer books translated into Arabic each year than into Greek - and there are only 11 million Greeks compared to hundreds of millions speaking Arabic. Do nothing bureaucracies are the norm. The legal system is usually little more than a means by which the rich buy their way and the poor get nowhere. They've never built much in the way of functioning civil institutions. You can't expect a veneer of Westernized Arabs - or Arabic speakers, etc. - to pull entire nations into the 21st century.

I could add more perspectives. I think all are valid at least in part.

In sum, however one views and weights when, I think they essentially say the chances for more darkness are greater than the chances for more light.

If you wait seventy years--roughly one generation--then you can press the 'Reset Button'.
Soviet and Chinese Communism lasted roughly 70 years.
Bad Ideas die after Bad Men are Buried. And Stalin and Mao lived until a ripe old age.
Islam Renaissance must wait for the current generation to die. Ie. The House of Saud.
Revolutions progress one death at a time.

I definitely agree with you on this. We forget that half the world was colonized, exploited and marginalized to the point that some nations like South Asian countries (ex. Pakistan/India) and African countries (Ex. Mali and Congo) lost their humanity and couldn't rise up as some other countries did (Ex. Turkey). We have to look at the geopolitical and social context in which a lot of these nations were and are and why they choose to resort to these methods.

Well I don't think its fair to say that Arabs CHOSE military dictatorships and oligarchies rather than that these things were imposed on them by circumstance, but I fully agree with your key point. While a developed democracy is a both stable and desirable, a young democracy is actually less stable than dictatorship, and it could be many years before people start to see benefits, even in terms of civil liberties.

Of course nothing can be said with certainty, but there are enough similarities between China and the Middle East for me to exceedingly confident that a revolution against the CCP would turn out similarly as these various revolutions in the Middle East.

China and the Arabic/middle eastern world have a similar dynamic in that
1. They both used to be world leaders who lost their preeminence in part because of the actions of "western imperialists." Most of the Arabic world used to be part of the Ottoman Empire which was carved up and exploited by the Western countries at the end of WWI (earlier in the case of North Africa). China was never carved up, but it was attacked by western countries on numerous occasions during the 19th century and subjected to unequal treaties. Most Chinese believe (rightly or wrongly) that the West played a dominant role in the disintegration of the Chinese Empire and turmoil China suffered during the first half of the 20th century. So many Chinese and Arabs resent the West and by extension have a resentment for Western political ideas.

2. In both the Arabic World and China there is a large segment of the educated, urban middle class (the segment not directly connected to the ruling regime) that support the creation of secular, multiparty, constitutional republics. However, the masses of farmers and workers are outside of all of that. Evidently, the majority of the Arabic workers and farmers support some form of religious governance. In China, the worker and farmers who don't support the current government generally support some form of Neo-Maoism. In either case, democracy would lead to the middle class being dominated by the workers and farmers would promote decidedly non-liberal politics.

China and the Arabic world are different in that China has much less of a chance of having a revolution. China has a much healthier economy with a far lower rate of youth unemployment. The smaller average family size in China leads parents to be more protective of their children and children more protective of themselves. When you have a small family you are also much less likely to have a relative who is killed or tortured by the ruling regime.

"The problem with a God-given law is that it cannot be changed and also leads to arbitrary rule by the clerics who monopolize the right to interpret God's will (see Iran)."
For some reason this kind of reminds me of the almost worshipful stance that some Americans take on their Constitution, which was a great document but also written over 200 years ago. While obviously the situations are very different, particularly in that those who wield the right to interpret the Constitution do not usually misuse it, but the comparison is still there.

Rule of law is the necessary basis for democracy. As long as there is no rule of law, or the law consists just in the whim of the sultan, it doesn't matter whether the sultan got into his place by elections, by a military coup or by heredity. The system of government will always be a sultanate.
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In a way, the popular demand for "sharia" is therefore understandable: A state governed by inadequate laws may arguably be better than a state governed by arbitrariness. The problem with a God-given law is that it cannot be changed and also leads to arbitrary rule by the clerics who monopolize the right to interpret God's will (see Iran).
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So the first step to improved governance must be to establish the rule of law for humans, not for God. That may well require not elections, but rather the enlightened absolutism of a leader like Frederick the Great, Kemal Atatürk, Lee Kuan Yew or Deng Xiaoping. Unfortunately no similar leader is in sight in the Arab world. Gamal Abdel Nasser could have done it, but was not up to the job.